PTC's Direct Modeling Strategy

PTC's recent announcement of Creo Elements/Direct 18.0 gave me an opportunity to call on Justin Teague, division vice president and general manager for its Design and Visualization Products Business Unit, to get some clarification on what can be a bit of a confusing story when it comes to the company's strategy and product direction for direct modeling.

PTC, the inventor of the parametric CAD modeling paradigm, purchased CoCreate Software in 2007 essentially to expand its customer base and to add modeling technology to its portfolio -- in this case, 2D and 3D collaboration and the real carrot, direct modeling.

The product has been a separate entity from PTC's Pro/Engineer flagship CAD offering, and it has essentially played to a separate audience, with the exception of a handful of customers that owned both. That is, until the 2009 timeframe, when newcomer SpaceClaim hit the market and direct modeling became a hot button for all the major CAD vendors, which began retooling their products and product roadmaps to address this new capability.

PTC primarily maintained the two as separate systems -- Pro/Engineer for parametric modeling needs and CoCreate for the more flexible, conceptual design tasks -- until it began promoting its Creo next-generation CAD platform. Creo 1.0, formally released in June, has a series of Any Role applications and supports Any Mode modeling. That means users can glide easily between parametric (Creo Parametric) and direct modeling (Creo Direct) modes, depending on the task.

That's where things got murky, at least for me. Now that Creo 1.0 supports both direct and parametric modeling in a single product family, was CoCreate washed up?

The answer to that question was clarified with PTC's recent announcement of Creo Elements/Direct 18.0, an upgrade to what used to be CoCreate. Teague explains that the upgrade is the start of a bridge that will transition users to the new Creo direct modeling environment. The latest release sports the same ribbon-based user interface as the rest of the Creo family of apps. A new Web client, additional Web Services in Model Manager, and deeper process integration with the Windchill PLM repository improve data sharing with other PTC applications.

This latest version of CoCreate (pardon me, I mean the Creo Elements/Direct 18.0) allows users to leverage PTC's FEA simulation functionality and visualization capabilities for the first time on their models and designs without having to do any data conversion.

@plasticmaker: I have to agree about the role of both methodologies. You can never fully replace the physical prototype. Yet as you mentioned, by reducing the number of physical prototypes to one or two greatly takes cost, time, and late-stage workarounds out of the process, which ultimately leads to better products in a shorter timeframe.

I think there's a place for both virtual and physical prototyping, especially in the product manufacturing arena. During the design phase, virtual prototyping and finite analysis cut down on the cost of multiple physical prototypes by requiring the designer to make only one...maybe two actual renditions of what he's inventing. This also cuts down (in a big way) the amount of time it takes to complete a project!

I actually think virtual prototyping is used pretty extensively in manufacturing organizations today--particularly ones in the automotive, aerospace and heavy machinery sectors that have made significant investments in PLM and digital prototyping tools.

Most forward-thinking engineering organizations are pushing for more virtual prototyping and virtual simulation far earlier on the process because it is so much cheaper to iron out design flaws then before "bending metal," as they'll tell you. I think the cost of these tools has come down greatly, they have become far more accessible and easy to use, and I think usage is definitely on the rise. That said, clearly virtual prototypes will ever completely replace physical prototyping or even the rapid prototyping stuff. But using the digital world to reduce the number of physical prototypes built is definitely where it's heading.

Beth, what's the status of virtual modeling as a replacement for acual physical prototypes? It seems like virutal got a tremendous buzz a few years back, and now I don't hear much about it. I know virtual modeling is a huge success at P&G, but a lot of their modeling is process modeling and not product modeling. My own gut feel is that the tremendous advances in inexpensive, great-looking 3D-printed prototypes have pushed all-virtual modeling to the background. It seems I've been in many engineering departments where I asked the all-virutal question, and I get a kind of pained look on the face of the chief engineer, and a comment that begins: "We tried it on X, but......" What's your take?

Virtual Reality (VR) headsets are getting ready to explode onto the market and it appears all the heavy tech companies are trying to out-develop one another with better features than their competition. Fledgling start-up Vrvana has joined the fray.

A Tokyo company, Miraisens Inc., has unveiled a device that allows users to move virtual 3D objects around and "feel" them via a vibration sensor. The device has many applications within the gaming, medical, and 3D-printing industries.

While every company might have their own solution for PLM, Aras Innovator 10 intends to make PLM easier for all company sizes through its customization. The program is also not resource intensive, which allows it to be appropriated for any use. Some have even linked it to the Raspberry Pi.

solidThinking updated its Inspire program with a multitude of features to expedite the conception and prototype process. The latest version lets users blend design with engineering and manufacturing constraints to produce the cheapest, most efficient design before production.

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